ACI Conventions: A Pathway from Young Professional to Industry Leader

6/2/2025

One of my missions during my term as ACI President is to support the new ACI Strategic Plan. In that spirit, I would like to draw attention to one of the strategic goals “Enhance the ACI Experience: attract, engage, and support young members.” ACI has over 15,000 student members internationally. Students qualify for free membership, which provides them with access to many ACI documents and publications, webinars, and on-demand courses. Students also receive steeply discounted registration rates for ACI Concrete Conventions, and more than 500 students take advantage of this at each ACI Convention. Participation in ACI as a student member is a pathway to opportunities in concrete industry careers through knowledge and networking. This became very apparent to me at the ACI Concrete Convention – Spring 2025 in Toronto, ON, Canada, in conversations with ACI members who made the transition from student or young member to leader in the concrete industry and ACI.

In my years attending ACI Conventions, I have learned to always allot more time than expected to walk the halls between meetings in order to chat with friends and colleagues. In Toronto, I saw Aali Alizadeh standing with a group of people and stopped to congratulate him on his receipt of the ACI Foundation Jean-Claude Roumain Innovation in Concrete Award. The group was reminiscing about how it had been 25 years since his and Pouria Ghods’ first ACI Convention, also in Toronto, while they were students in Iran. They had participated in the ACI Fiber-Reinforced Polymer (FRP) Composites Student Competition, the first time for a team from Iran. ACI opened doors for both of them, leading to graduate studies in Canada and later to founding a company together in Canada where they serve as Chief Technology Officer and Chief Executive Officer, respectively. Their company, Giatec Scientific Inc., is highly engaged in ACI, sponsoring the awards for students presenting at the Research in Progress sessions. An opportunity to attend an ACI Convention took them on a path to become innovators and leaders in the concrete industry.

Similarly, social networking events at ACI Conventions are great opportunities to chat with friends and meet new people. At the Women in ACI reception and at the Concrete Mixer, I had a chance to meet Emilia Clavijo and hear her story. Clavijo just received her MS from Auburn University, Auburn, AL, USA, this spring and was attending the ACI Convention to present her graduate research. Her relationship with ACI started a few years before, though, when she was an undergraduate student in Ecuador. She and other students at her university wanted to participate in the ACI student competition at the ACI Concrete Convention – Spring 2023 in San Francisco, CA, USA, but their university did not have the equipment needed to test their materials. They were so motivated to compete that they traveled to another university for testing and paid their expenses to attend the ACI Convention out of pocket. Their effort and sacrifices paid off as they won first place in the competition. This participation opened doors for graduate education in the United States for Clavijo and continued participation in ACI, including as a Chapter Officer.

At the heart of ACI Conventions are the committee meetings, and I encourage new attendees to step into a few to see how the work is done behind the scenes to create the variety of ACI products. At one committee meeting, during introductions, two prominent ACI members and leaders shared that their first ACI Convention had been in Toronto. Arturo Gaytan Covarrubias, FACI, competed in the same student competition as Alizadeh and Ghods 25 years ago. He then joined the ACI Central and Southern Mexico Chapter, where he has served as President. Later, he encouraged the founding of the ACI Northwest and Southeast Mexico Chapters. Gaytan Covarrubias is now Innovation and Sustainability Manager at Cemex Mexico, the recipient of five ACI awards, and a member of the ACI Board of Direction. Dimitri Feys also attended his first ACI Convention in Toronto, in 2012. Feys is an Associate Professor at Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla, MO, USA, and is immediate past Chair of the ACI Student and Young Professional Activities Committee (SYPAC). He also serves as the liaison between ACI and International Union of Laboratories and Experts in Construction Materials, Systems and Structures (RILEM) as RILEM’s regional convener for North America and the Caribbean. Attendance at an ACI Convention as a student or young professional can indeed lead to an active career in the concrete industry and continued career-long engagement with ACI.

It is incredibly important to embrace participation in ACI by our students and young members to build the future of our industry and organization. To that end, ACI has recently engaged with Together Mentoring to provide a virtual platform where young members are matched with senior ACI volunteers to enhance the young members’ experience and guide them through the ACI network. While current mentor-mentee interactions have been established, applications will be accepted year-round in preparation for next year’s session.

Maria C.G. Juenger

The team from Iran that participated in the FRP Composites Student Competition at the ACI Concrete Convention – Fall 2000 in Toronto, ON, Canada

Recreation of the Iranian team photo at the ACI Concrete Convention – Spring 2025 in Toronto. Aali Alizadeh is front row (right). Pouria Ghods is back row (second from right)

Student competition team from Ecuador (Emilia Clavijo [left]) at the ACI Concrete Convention – Spring 2023 in San Francisco, CA, USA

Emilia Clavijo (left) with ACI President Maria Juenger (center) and SYPAC Chair Elissa Narro Aguirre (right) at the ACI Concrete Convention – Spring 2025 in Toronto